Monday, October 17, 2016

Procratination

Procrastination-

The key is careful planning. Careful is the operative word in that sentence. For procrastinators, planning isn’t usually a problem. They love planning because planning involves not actually doing! Procrastinators’ plans often have little actual thought, are vague or open-ended, and can lack detail or direction. Instead, you’ll need to make a detailed plan. The following steps will guide you.

Establish the objective.

Specifically identify what you want to achieve. You may be familiar with the concept of SMART goals—but if you aren’t, here’s a link to a previous blog post from David Witt. When you know exactly what you want to achieve, you’ll be able to lay out a clear path on how you want to get there.

Prioritise what you want to achieve, putting the most important task first.

As a leader, you’ll need to balance your priorities with the priorities of the team. It’s really easy to establish a list of 15 things to do and then have no idea where to start because they all seem equally important. So first identify the things you need to do. Remember that priorities evolve as you move forward on your tasks. Therefore, you’ll need to review your and your team’s priorities from time to time to see if they have changed.

Gather the information you need to make a decision.

Having relevant information means that you’ll be able to justify and explain your decision when the time comes. And the more information you have, the more confident you’ll be in making that decision. Don’t lose sight of your objectives here. It’s easy to fall into a trap and think you can’t make this decision because you don’t have all of the information. Don’t put off a decision because you’re waiting for arbitrary details.

Consider all of the sensible options and select the best one.

With any good plan, there are likely to be a number of choices you can make. Identify your options and remove those that aren’t logical. Then choose the best option—the one that is going to help achieve your objectives whilst meeting your priorities.

Take action.

This is the hardest part—but now that you’ve clarified your decision, you’ll find it easier to take action. You’ve established a clear and sensible path to achieving a specific outcome instead of our procrastinating leader’s vague, open-ended to-do list.